Mister Fixit

Today was fixit day. Fixed a lawnmower, a ceiling lamp and a microphone. It should be easy but it never is.

I started with the lawnmower but got interupted by a phone call. As I was talking on the phone I mentioned to the other party that I had to go back and finish the lawnmower. I saw Bev's eyebrows raise which is no mean feat as she was facing away from me at the time, and heard her say,"I know you will fix the light in the closet this morning like you promised me last night." The lawn mower quickly lost its number one priority and the closet light took it place.

Now for the first ten years of our stay in Jinja I never had to worry about the closet light going bad but then I never had a closet either. Well the closet that I now have is a dark and forboding place so Bev had asked me to put a 100 watt bulb in the fixture. This is about 40 watts above the rating and when the bulb burned out the fixture crumbled in my hand as I tried to replace it. Its the same result we got as kids when we put a flood lamp in our friend's sister's Easy Bake oven. The cooking process is greatly speeded up but the life of the oven drops at an alarming rate. Same with the light fixture! Go figure.

Before I could go buy a new fixture I was interupted by Jordan and Steven whom I had instructed to paint the garage. Well it used to be a garage but now it is now a two room apartment (after a short stint as a two room chicken coop). Anyway they went and bought the paint so they also got the new light fixture. While waiting for them I tore the lawnmower apart and cleaned the air filter. It now had to dry so I went to work on the microphone. Just about the time I realized that I would need a soldering iron the light fixture showed up. So dropping the mic, I went back to that dark closet and installed the new light. I am now officially my wife's hero!

Then back to the mower. It needed a part welded so I gave the piece to Davis and sent him to have it welded. So I went back to the mic. Doing what I could which wasn't much, I then was interupted by two phone calls and lunch. Then Davis returned with the welded part so I reassembled the mower up to the airfilter which still needed to dry. I headed to Main Street and bought a meter of solder for 2000 shillings and a brand new soldering iron for 8,000 Ugs. 4 dollars isn't too bad. At least some things are still cheap!

I soon found out why I didn't have a soldering iron already. It takes three hands to operate. Since one of my three hands has a pretty good shake to it what should have been a 15 minute job took 2 hours. After finally getting the mic back together I tested it and it worked! At least I assumed it worked. It made a horrible screetching sound when I sang into it and since that is how I sing it must be working properly.

Then Davis wanted to run the mower but by that time I couldn't remember where I had put the air filter. Eagle eyed Ryan found it in the dirty dishes, Hey if I knew how it got there or why it was there I'd tell you so don't ask. Then we installed the filter and Davis mowed for 5 minutes before the rain came.

So to celebrate a successful day where there is now light in the dark closet and short grass in the yard and horrible screetching sounds from sound system, everybody watched a movie together. I saw the opening and closing credits but not much else.

I'm tired and going to bed. Honey, what do you meant the light won't switch off?